September 8, 2008: It's The Frugal Girl's Fault!

The Frugal Girl has given me a guilt complex. All week she has been blogging about cold water washing and line drying. I'm pretty good about the washing part, although I do use warm for whites, but I've been using my dryer almost daily this summer. Hey, I have an excuse! We bought our Arizona property in April of 2004. One of the first things I did was buy a clothesline, because about 99% of the time the weather down there is perfect for drying outside. Only once since then have I had to make a trip to the laundromat to dry my clothes, so I think I've done quite well. Unfortunately, the clothesline I bought, the only one I could find at Home Depot, was a piece of junk.

And that's exactly where it ended up the following winter, in the junk yard.

I was telling my dear little sister about it, and she said she happened to have the kind I was looking for, brand new, in the box, and that I could have it. So the winter of 2005-06 I used her clothesline, which was the kind I wanted, but....it just happened to be missing some of its parts, so I had to substitute 2x2s for poles. Needless to say, I was NOT satisfied. Recycled that one to a neighbor who just wanted the lines.

All this time, I had a lovely, sturdy umbrella type clothesline in my backyard here in WA. And I actually used it! However, I also had a very nice dryer here, and none in Arizona (we live a very simple life through the winter months). So the following winter my clothesline made the trip south, and that is where it remained.

I was perfectly happy using my dryer every wash day in the summer, and my clothesline in the winter.

Until this week.

So Saturday I went out to the garage and found a fifty-foot rope. I took it out to that big, never used dog kennel, the one that sits in the corner of my garden and may someday be a giant, expensive trellis for pole beans. I looped it and tied it and stretched it back and forth and...I made myself a clothesline!

EG, you sound like Mr. H! He hates the stiff jeans and towels. In AZ there is usually a warm breeze blowing, so the clothes come off the line just as they would from the dryer. I love rough bath towels and the smell of the sheets when they come off the line.

You go girl! Its great to see the your skills working over time and to build a clothesline out of just a 50ft piece of rope...Im very impressed!! Since I started using my new clothesline around 18 months ago my poer bills have gone down and I just love the smell of the laundry coming off the line...it smells so fresh to me and Im not going back to that dryer at all! I got my clothesline at http://www.urbanclotheslines.com and they had all sorts of lines to choose from. If we can only get more people using a clothesline at home think of all that power and money we could all be saving!!...Keep up the great work Granny!!!!

I have the exact same clothes line from Home Depot and you are right it is junk! But it is all I have for the moment. I long for the kind we had when I was a little girl- do they even exsist anymore as my husband and I can't find them!

There is nothing like going to bed on sheets that have been hung out to dry. I try to get all my clothesline drying in when I can cause you sure can't hang clothes out to dry in Western Oregon in the winter!

My old clothesline, the one I use in Arizona, is probably 20 years old and still just like new. It's an umbrella type, not the upside-down umbrella like the junky one. Even that kind seems so flimsy compared to my old one.

I really want a T-post clothesline, a nice long one with about 6 lines. It's so nice to just start at one end and work your way down the line, and even my king sized sheets would fit.

My sil has one that you just tug to you: sort of a pulley at both ends if that makes sense. I'm trying to figure a way to put up a line in my family room. When it starts getting rainy out here, we start using the woodstove. I keep a kettle on it to keep it from drying out the whole house, but it's not a good fix. Don't you think running a line in the front room would be a great way to get the best of both worlds? I'd just have to get it up and down b/4 hubby arrives. He doesn't want to deal with moving around the line in the room, can't blame him actually.

Well, carolynp, I used to string a line across the bedroom to hang baby diapers, so why not? Yes, we had CLOTH diapers when mine were babies, LOL. I used to have one on my patio that was on a pulley. I'd pull it out and attach it to a post an the other side of the patio, but it never worked really well. It seems like it would always bind up, so it was just easier to tie a rope around the posts and use that. Maybe you could devise a way to make that line in the living room more attractive to the husband. Like using the clothes pins to hang Doritos or bags of popcorn and stuff. I know that would please Mr. H!